Someone is buying up every single one of these games as we speak just to preserve them (Picture: Microsoft)
Although the Xbox 360 store isn’t shutting down till next July, a handful of original Xbox games have already been delisted.
Yesterday’s announcement that Microsoft will shut down the Xbox 360 store in 2024 was disappointing but inevitable news. For as much as Xbox boss Phil Spencer champions video game preservation, it was never likely that Microsoft would keep a digital storefront for a nearly 18-year-old console active forever.
The Xbox’s backwards compatibility library means most original Xbox and Xbox 360 games will remain available for purchase even after the shutdown, such as the older Call Of Duty games, but some will slip through the cracks.
It’s been calculated that that at least 220 games will be lost once the store closes and some may never be seen again.
This is according to VGC, although it admits that several of the listed games have since received re-releases or upgraded versions on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, as well as other platforms such as PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch.
Even so, that leaves a lot of digital-only Xbox games that will be lost to time and will only live on through customers who have bought them.
In fact, some games appear to have been purged already, with zero warning. Remember when Microsoft delisted 44 games from the Xbox 360 store in February? It seems a further eight – all of which released for the original Xbox – have been removed too.
The eight in question are:
Armed And Dangerous
Grabbed By The Ghoulies
Indiana Jones And The Emperor’s Tomb
Sphinx And The Cursed Mummy
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict
Admittedly, most of them are still available through other means. Splinter Cell: Double Agent’s Xbox 360 version can still be purchased, and its inclusion in the backwards compatibility library means it’ll survive next year’s purge.
Also, Grabbed By The Ghoulies is bundled with the Rare Replay collection, which remains available via Xbox Game Pass or as a standalone purchase.
The rest can be bought via Steam with the exception of Unreal Championship 2 (which only ever launched for Xbox, so that is effectively gone) and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which is now only readily available through the PlayStation 3 store.
Still, these are not obscure games and now their original Xbox versions are gone forever.
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Still, it’s strange that Microsoft issued no warning about these games’ removal and, according to ResetEra user denverchickennuggets, they’ve been missing since April.
A verified Xbox developer known as OscarK has since promised to look into the situation and see if these delistings were a mistake or not.
These games will probably be fine, but anything that only ever launched digitally will become lost media (pic: Microsoft)
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Although the Xbox 360 store isn’t shutting down till next July, a handful of original Xbox games have already been delisted.